80/100
Players4 ratings

Where to get it

Nintendo eShop

2008 · EAD Tokyo

Flipnote Studio

Nintendo exclusive

Flipnote Studio is an application for the Nintendo DSi that can be downloaded at no cost from the Nintendo DSi Shop.

Released: 24 December 2008
Platforms: Nintendo DS
Genres: —
Developers: EAD Tokyo
Publishers: Nintendo
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Country: Japan
Languages: English, Japanese

About

Flipnote Studio, known in Japan as Moving Notepad (うごくメモ帳, Ugoku Memochō), is a free downloadable 2D digital animation and media player application developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DSi's DSiWare digital distribution service. Flipnote Studio allows users to create both word-based and picture-based notes with the stylus, add sound, and combine them to create frame-by-frame flipbook-style animations. In English-language keynote addresses and conferences prior to its release, the application was referred to as Moving Notepad by Nintendo, and was announced at E3 2009 officially as Flipnote Studio. It was released in Japan on December 24, 2008, in North America on August 11, 2009, and in Europe and Australia on August 14. It was later included as a preloaded program on the Nintendo DSi and DSi XL with firmware version 1.4.

An online service, titled Flipnote Hatena (うごメモはてな, Ugomemo Hatena), developed by Nintendo associate Hatena, acted as a social media platform where animations could be shared and viewed by other users. The service officially retired on May 31, 2013. However, users were still able to view Flipnotes from their Flipnote Hatena account via the Flipnote Gallery World service provided with Flipnote Studio 3D, until it was shut down on April 2, 2018.

Keywords

non-game software
dsiware
drawing
animation

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Development

Flipnote Studio was developed by Yoshiaki Koizumi and Hideaki Shimizu. The two began working on the project without the knowledge of anyone else at Nintendo EAD Tokyo. It was initially designed as a tool for taking notes with the name Moving Notepad, and it was considered early on as a possible WiiWare application to transmit these notes from a DS to the Wii to be shared with other users of the application.

When the Nintendo DSi was announced, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata decided that the company would work with Hatena, which had recently shifted its R&D department to Kyoto, where Nintendo Corporate Labs is located. The partnership was announced shortly before the application's release in Japan. Koizumi said that they chose to work with Hatena because "it takes a special skill set to maintain the User Generated Contents (UGC) site, and we don't have that skill. We rely on Hatena on that part".

Reception

Flipnote Studio received positive reviews upon its release in the west, with praise directed towards its features, ability to share animations locally to others, and inclusion of a social media platform in Flipnote Hatena (the first ever Nintendo social media). It was criticized for a low page and space limit, lack of colors (with only red and blue), region-locked online service, and tendency to glitch.

As of January 2009, there had been more than 100,000 user-submitted creations. During its first six months of operation in Japan, Flipnote Hatena received over 1,000,000 user-submitted creations.